Middle-Class Déjà Vu: Conditions of Possibility from Victorian England to Contemporary Kathmandu
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Publiée
27-03-2023
Mark Liechty
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0435-5074
Résumé
Although the term “middle class” is often invoked, almost never is the concept defined or theorized in any systematic, coherent manner. What is a middle class or middle-classness? Is there one middle class or many? How are we to understand relationships between middle-class formations in different times and places? Combining perspectives from both anthropology and history, this paper tries to address the problem of how it is that we can call groups “middle class” even if they are culturally very different and separated widely in time and space. How do we conceptualize “middle class” theoretically to account for both what is similar, and what is different? Drawing on the concept of “conditions of possibility”, this paper offers a historical and spatial model of middle class formation, one that attempts to theorize the formation of middle classes, and the emergence of differences between them, in terms of historical processes and patterns of inter- and intra-class spatialization. This involves conceptualizing the emergence of middle classes in the context of global capitalism while also avoiding the teleological reduction that labels some middle-class cultures as merely derivative of others.
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References
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Tawney, R. H. (1957). Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: New American Library.
Thompson, E. P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage.
Thompson, E. P. (1978). Eighteenth-century English Society: Class Struggle without Class? Social History, 3(2), 133-165.
Thompson, E. P. (1993). Customs in Common. New York: Free Press.
Tuladhar, K. (2004). Caravan to Lhasa: Newar Merchants of Kathmandu in Traditional Tibet. Kathmandu: Tuladhar Family.
Waldrop, A. (2004). Gating and Class Relations: the Case of a New Delhi “Colony”. City and Society, 16(2), 93-116.
Weber, M. (1958). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribners.
Weyland, P. (1993). Inside the Third World Village. London & New York: Routledge.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a Way of Life. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 1-24.
Wolf, E. (1982). Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yeh, R. (2012). A Middle Class Public at Mexico’s Norther Border. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 189-212). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Zhang, L. (2012). Private Homes, Distinct Lifestyles: Performing a New Middle Class in China. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 213-236). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: NLB.
Blaut, J. M. (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York & London: Guilford.
Bose, S. (Ed.) (1990). South Asia and World Capitalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Braudel, F. (1977). Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bullard, R. D., Grigsby, J. E., & Lee, C. (Eds.) (1994). Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: CAAS Publications.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chaudhuri, K. N. (1985). Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean World: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Genova, N. (2005). Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago. Durham: Duke University Press.
Dixit, K. (1992). Compact Development: Kathmandu Tried it First. Himal, 5(1), 39.
Ehrenreich, B. (1989). Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New York: Pantheon.
Ferguson, J. (2006). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fernandes, L. (2006). India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. (1970). The Order of Things. New York: Vintage.
Gilfoyle, T. (1992). City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920. New York & London: Norton.
Goody, J. (1996). The East in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hannerz, U. (1980). Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, N. (1998). The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham: Duke University Press.
Heiman, R. (2012). Gate Expectations: Discursive Displacement of the “Old Middle Class” in an American Suburb. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 237-270). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Joshi, S. (2001). Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India. New Delhi: OUP India.
Johnston, R. D. (2003). The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jones, C. (2012). Women in the Middle: Feminity, Virtue, and Excess in Indonesian Discourses of Middle Classness. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 145-168). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Kelly, J., & Kaplan, M. (2001). Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Liechty, M. (1997). Selective Exclusion: Foreigners, Foreign Goods, and Foreignness in Modern Nepali History. Studies in Nepali History and Society, 2(1), 5-68.
Liechty, M. (2003). Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Liechty, M. (2005). Carnal Economies: The Commodification of Food and Sex in Kathmandu. Cultural Anthropology, 20(1), 1-38.
Low, S. M. (2001). The Edge and The Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear. American Anthropologist 103(1), 45-58.
Ludden, D. (Ed.) (2004). Capitalism in Asia. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies.
McCann, E. J. (1999). Race, Protest, and Public Space: Contextualizing Lefebvre in the U.S. City. Antipode, 31(2), 163-184.
Meillassoux, C. (1972). From Reproduction to Production. Economy and Society, 1(1), 93-105.
Mintz, S. (1985). Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin.
Mitchell, T. (2002). Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mosse, G. (1985). Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Mouffe, C. (1979). Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci. In C. Mouffe (Ed.), Gramsci and Marxist Theory (pp. 168-204). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Parthasarathi, P. (1998). Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in the 18th Century: Britain and South Asia. Past and Present, 158, 79-109.
Rankin, K. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Markets: Economic Liberalization and Social Change in Nepal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Scott, J. W. (1999). Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schielke, S. (2012). Living in the Future Tense: Aspiring for World and Class in Provincial Egypt. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 31-56). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London & New York: Verso.
Srivastava, S. (2012). National Identity, Bedrooms, and Kitchens: Gated Communities and New Narratives of Space in India. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 57-84). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Subrahmanyam, S. (Ed.) (1996). Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World. Aldershot, Great Britain and Brookfield, VT USA: Variorum.
Taussig, M. (1980). The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Tawney, R. H. (1957). Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: New American Library.
Thompson, E. P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage.
Thompson, E. P. (1978). Eighteenth-century English Society: Class Struggle without Class? Social History, 3(2), 133-165.
Thompson, E. P. (1993). Customs in Common. New York: Free Press.
Tuladhar, K. (2004). Caravan to Lhasa: Newar Merchants of Kathmandu in Traditional Tibet. Kathmandu: Tuladhar Family.
Waldrop, A. (2004). Gating and Class Relations: the Case of a New Delhi “Colony”. City and Society, 16(2), 93-116.
Weber, M. (1958). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribners.
Weyland, P. (1993). Inside the Third World Village. London & New York: Routledge.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a Way of Life. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 1-24.
Wolf, E. (1982). Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yeh, R. (2012). A Middle Class Public at Mexico’s Norther Border. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 189-212). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
Zhang, L. (2012). Private Homes, Distinct Lifestyles: Performing a New Middle Class in China. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography (pp. 213-236). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.
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